Nazis — Ukrainians — Russians. A look at the past.
I went to high school with David Preston, for many years a writer and editor at newspapers in Philadelphia. In fact, we worked on the school newspaper together, but that’s another story.
He’s spent years on researching the topic of the Holocaust, since both of his late parents were survivors. I urge you to read any of the materials on his website, especially about his courageous and outspoken mother.
Each month he sends out a newsletter (more like an essay) and this month’s deals with the Nazi occupiers in Ukraine and Ukrainian ultrarightists.
As an aside, I’ve published this story not to disparage today’s Ukrainians, but the point out that some things don’t ever change in the far-right mindset. Always willing to pick up whatever tool is handy to push their own agenda.
But back to Preston. He’s one of the best writers you will encounter, too.
Dear Friends,
To supplement personal materials inherited from my parents, I have for many years accumulated other documentary evidence of the Holocaust in places they lived. In the case of my mother – who as a young woman in 1943-44 hid for 14 months in the sewers of the German-occupied Polish city now called Lviv, Ukraine – I’ve assembled a modest but significant collection of authentic photos and documents from that city formerly known as Lwów, Lvov, or Lemberg. I’ve identified these items in collaboration with prominent historians and have begun to display them on my website, helping to provide context for my own unlikely existence.
At my website under the heading EVIDENCE, in a section titled 1941 Lviv pogrom [click to view], you’ll find 19 original snapshots taken by German soldiers who entered the city 82 years ago, at the end of June 1941, welcomed by Ukrainians as liberators from Soviet rule as the last detachments of the Russian army left the city. Ukrainian nationalists immediately proclaimed an independent state in Lviv and sought to curry favor with the Nazis by instigating violence against Jews, whom they considered their oppressors. Despite the Ukrainians’ formidable display of Jew-hatred, the occupying Germans didn’t let them have their own state.
Dave’s full newsletter is on the web at gem.godaddy.com/…
Website is davidleepreston.com